Fragments of the Philosophical Poets

On the contrary, it seems to me at present that it is better to present the fragments in their disparate and unadorned language rather than in a falsified one, especially since it is agreed that the witnesses, from Plato and Aristotle on, were not at all curious about these matters. Therefore, just as it is necessary for investigators of the Homeric dialect to descend to the very workshop of the poets, if it is at all possible, while editors must necessarily stay on this side of the Alexandrian age, the language of the philosophical poets, colored in various ways by the varying reliability and custom of the witnesses, must be held onto stubbornly so that an uncorrupted foundation can be built for those inquiries which, I believe, will be able to be established somewhat more conveniently and surely regarding the poetry of the Eleatics and the Sicilians.

For those undertaking this task, I have also provided a full index of words, following the example of Kaibel, although I had to strive for brevity in such a much greater abundance of vocabulary. Therefore, I have refrained from indexing the locations of all the minor particles. Rather, I have exhibited those which seemed worthy of some observation, while leaving the common ones in my drafts; from these I have placed only the numbers of frequency, adding the sum of the verses of each individual poet above, so that the proportions of each might appear immediately. I did not do this because I believe that much can be learned from those proportions according to the secret doctrine of the Neopythagoreans, which they call stylometry (nor do I think it possible to unravel from that whether the Physics or the Purifications of Empedocles are earlier), but it is not uninteresting to know how much the usage varies in the application of individual particles. Thus, I observed that the particle gar for is much more beloved by the earlier poets, who are closer to the Ionic custom, than by the later ones.

But I do not wish to descend into individual details, which are infinite. The sails must be furled: the harbor is at hand. Therefore, nothing remains but to pay the due thanks, according to the feelings of my heart, to the governor of the Corpus, who himself wished to be involved in this second voyage as a most skilled helper and most friendly advisor.

Berlin, Ides of October, 1901.

HERMANN DIELS.